North American Free Trade Agreement requires that you pay duty on keyboards? I'm not sure that makes sense, but please enlighten me otherwise.
...And here I've been more forthcoming and accommodating to you than any retailer has probably ever been when it comes to internal shipping cost/operation and now you're going to be stingy with your interpretation of my "attitude" over a 2 dimensional textual conversation? What exactly is so off-putting with my response? That instead of spending my time constructing a shipping system that offers the most benefit to bargain hunters in far off lands, I'd rather spend it on developing new and unique products?
I think you're very much in the wrong here my friend.
NAFTA states that I do NOT have to pay duty on products that are manufactured/assembled within North America -- within limits, there are certain types of exemptions, but keyboards are not exempted and therefore fall under this agreement. Hence the "free" part of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Since the keyboard I ordered from you was not manufactured or assembled in North America I then have to pay duty. You, as an importer, also likely also have to pay some sort of import tax on the products coming into the US, so in the case of you guys shipping to Canada duty gets paid twice on the product. Nothing either of us can do about it (unless I could find a distributor in Canada and then I could skip the extra layer of tax).
Re the "attitude" reference: it stems from pretty much the whole conversation. Here's how it all reads from my end of things ...
I pointed out that it was not cost effective to order in Canada and that your shipping costs were high (especially compared to your service levels) and your boxes, or at least the one I got, were larger than needed (which presumably don't help shipping prices, bigger boxes == more money more often than not) and that after the required duty on top of it all it was a very expensive endeavour. You replied and said that you would like to see pictures of the too large boxes (presumably for proof, i.e. you called me a liar). I couldn't provide a picture as I had recycled the box already so clearly I am wrong and you are right. I thought Ok, whatever ... if you don't believe me that's fine. You then go on to ask for a breakdown of cheaper shipping options/service levels, ok fine.
In the next reply I realized my mistake between the $50 and $30 shipping option and say so. Yes I could have gotten cheaper shipping but the price vs service level is still bad in comparison to other vendors and I decided to walk away from it all.
On doing some more research last week because I wanted to purchase another TKL board I found the same to be true so I decided I'd share some of my findings in this thread since you had asked for breakdowns. You reply by finding reason to fault all of the examples of cheaper shipping and/or better service levels citing that you "don't buy" it (am I a liar again? Did you read the page where it clearly stated the shipping price?) or that the vendor is lying (they are liars?), or that I'm wrong that they don't ship from the US (I'm a liar again? Have you seen all the tracking info that I have as I monitored the shipments with the various shippers used?). You go on to say that these companies must all be losing money on the shipping, and that maybe they also have some sort of discounts with shipping companies, maybe they are also doing consolidated brokerage, etc. Maybe they are and maybe they do, and honestly as the end user I don't know or care as long as the price is right, it's trackable and it arrives in a decent amount of time and intact (never mind that some shipping options even come with guaranteed ship times so you'll know when that latest the things will arrive are -- USPS doesn't offer that option).
You also go on to infer that I'm a "penny pincher" and basically that your "boutique" shop is not for "penny pinchers" but for your niche. You also make a semi-derogatory statement that basically alludes to the fact that my government is punishing me for not buying Canadian. To address this the whole fact that I chose to pay for the $50 shipping option instead of the $30 one should tell you something about me being a "penny pincher" -- on the contrary. I paid for the service level that I needed to in order to get the board within a reasonable time frame. Not to upgrade to that level of shipping using USPS from California to Canada would have resulted in incredibly slow service and I didn't want to potentially wait weeks for the board to arrive (and it would have been weeks, you'll have to trust me on this as I live in Canada and receive stuff from California regularly). While I do appreciate value for my money I'm not what I would call "cheap" (read: penny pincher)
Now, in rebuttal I'd like to say this:
In your defense you make some statements about WASD, some of which are most likely incorrect. I would almost certainly not have the same customs delays with buying from WASD, nor would I have to pay the duty buying from them. Why? Because they do enough assembly with their product that it would fall under NAFTA (even assuming that all of their 'parts' are imported). That means I would have to pay no duty and as long as the paperwork was correctly filled out there would be no holdup at customs. Lastly their shipping price seems to be quoted in realtime, not just a fixed figure tossed into PayPal. You somehow see this is a bad thing and that they are clearly not "making money" from shipping. That infers to me that you are. Some online vendors will call shipping the cost of doing business, others (seemingly like your company) feel the need to make money off of that portion of things too. If that is truly your approach I honestly think you're coming at things from the wrong angle, but maybe that's a boutique sort of thing, make money at every possible step you can.
As for "bargain hunters in far off lands" ... ok, again whatever. This "bargain hunter" in a "far off land" will shop elsewhere from now on, without a doubt. You can keep your (imported) products, that also come from a "far off land" (a lot freakin' farther off than my land). The only reason I didn't buy from WASD the first time around is that I wanted a TKL and they don't (yet) offer one. You can pretty much bet that once they do I will be placing my order with them.
Lastly, after all this you still call me "my friend" while telling me that I'm still wrong? Can you GET more condescending? If you can't see the "attitude" in any of this then there's no hope. I agree that textual conversations are difficult, but I honestly have a hard time reading anything but "attitude" into most of this.
Sorry, one more comment that you left yourself wide open for. I wouldn't want you to waste your time developing something that might be useful to your business and save your customers a few bucks here and there ... but do you really develop new and unique products? I thought you resold imported keyboards and various (mostly out of stock) accessories to go with them ... please correct me if I'm mistaken. And yes, that is MY attitude showing
